I shoot in a semi-rural area and rarely get to see the sun setting on the horizon, let alone over the sea. Usually i am down the bottom of a valley somewhere when shooting twilights! So I was very excited when I heard we were going to do a beachside penthouse with one of my local agents, Dawn Danton.

The photograph is my usual technique of mixing a few exposures with masks in Photoshop. This is a typical Australian scene with a very bright exterior shot late in the afternoon (the sun would be directly behind that fireplace at the time of this shot) and most Aussie photographers find the most efficient method to deal with the bright sunlight we get, is to utilise a separate shot for the window view.

The view out the window here is extremely important as this penthouse apartment looks right over the most prestigious beach in Adelaide. The exposure required to get the view correct would leave little of the interior ambient light in the room contributing to the shot so the resulting shot is very flashy.

The lighting I now use is a N-Flash, a new kind of portable strobe that uses a self contained battery to give the power of a studio strobe without the hassle of electrical cords or battery packs. It was just bounced off the wall behind the camera while hand held, though there was also another flash exposure used for the bedroom as well.

Another exposure utilises as much of the ambient light as possible in the room with the flash acting as gentle fill. In fact the area with the mirror reflecting the wall I was using to bounce my light off was masked in from a ambient only shot.

The shots are then combined with a variety of masking techniques to get the final exposure where the flashier window pull shots is only shows through the mask as required.

I’ve removed all the entries in the Photographer of the Month flickr group except the 13 above that were awarded points by the jury and have posted entrants name and points awarded. Thanks for everyone’s participation!

While unrelated to today’s post, I feel obligated to mention that this morning starting at 9:30 AM PST, Amazon will have a special sale on the PocketWizard Plus III. I don’t personally use these, but I hear they’re popular. 🙂